


in my dreams we're almost touching

by thescrewtapedemos



Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF
Genre: M/M, Multi, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 13:19:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7223890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescrewtapedemos/pseuds/thescrewtapedemos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Odd man out doesn't feel so great.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in my dreams we're almost touching

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Steelwing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steelwing/gifts).



> happy birthday molly!! hope ya like angst fic!! title from in my dreams we're almost touching by ricky eat acid

He had expected it to stop hurting after the first time.

Maybe it’d been stupid of him. To expect his chest to stop aching when he saw them together, when he watched Porter drift to Hugo like it’d been a necessary result of gravity. He’d been able to console himself at least that he’d never have to choose, never have to force the soft ambiguous longing in his chest to resolve into pointing at one or the other.

Not that he’d ever actually _planned_ to, exactly. It’d been enough to drift in their orbits, to let delicious possibilities float between him and them, between either of them and himself. In the end he supposes it’s his own fault for never forcing himself to choose.

But it’d been fine. He’d had _Anton_ , or at least he’d thought so. There’d been just as much possibility there, just as much quiet chemistry.

He’d fucked that one up, too. Waited too long. He hadn’t seen it coming, Anton drifting to Porter and Hugo instead of him, but he should have. 

He watches Anton lean down in the privacy of the booth, brush a quick kiss across Porter’s temple and then tilt the other way to do the same across Hugo’s cheekbone. He looks right between them, like he fits. Like he was supposed to be there. In the faded neon lights he looks pleased and sated and beautiful, they all do, they look like fae creatures and Dillon’s never felt more remote or unnecessary.

He looks down at his drink.

* * *

It’s easy to follow Anton out of the club. Dillon’s done it before, smuggled a beer under his coat and watched Anton sneak into the alley to slide out his covert packet of cigarettes. It’s a bad habit but Dillon loves it, loves Anton leaning drunkenly against some brick wall, the faint club music in the background, cigarette glowing like a distant star in his mouth.

He’s always been so enchanted with pretty Anton, delicate and kind and intense in a way that makes Dillon’s breath catch in his chest. Makes his heart go rabbit-quick, adrenaline and sweet anticipation.

Before, if Dillon were to lean in Anton would accept him closer. Would let Dillon _be Dillon_ , be handsy and free with affection, press his nose against Anton’s temple and breathe in surreptitiously. He’d smelled like aftershave before, and beer and cigarette smoke and sometimes leather. Now, he wonders if he’ll smell Porter or Hugo on him. He hasn’t missed the ease of their hands lingering on each other.

It’s a bitter thought and he’s ashamed of it as soon as it registers. He leans against the wall with a careful foot between them, brings the beer to his lips and breathes in.

“Thanks for being so good about,” Anton breaks into the not-quiet, gestures some complicated nonsense encompassing himself, Dillon, the club behind them. For a moment Dillon squints at him drunkenly, not understanding, but then with a nauseating rush he realizes what Anton means. That he _appreciates_ that Dillon is stepping aside and not making a fuss.

Not trying to join in. Not asking _what about me_.

Dillon snorts. It probably doesn’t come out as broken as it feels in his chest. He’s drunk. They both are.

“Of course, man,” he drags out of himself and lifts the corners of his lips around the mouth of the bottle.

“No, really,” Anton says and transfers the cigarette to his off hand and stumbles forward a step. He’s drunker than he looks, his hand when it lands on Dillon’s arm is hot and a little tighter then he probably meant it to be. “You’re a great friend.”

Dillon looks down at his hand for a moment and considers proving that he isn’t. Proving that he’s the worst friend any of them could have, that he hates every moment of their relationship. That he hates looking at them together, can’t think about it without his stomach churning like he’s going to be sick, his ribs aching like they’re about to cave in. He hates their relationship so much because he can’t _have_ it.

He’d do anything to be a part of it. They just don't want him there.

It’s humiliating to think about. He hauls his eyes back up to meet Anton’s cloudy, drunken gaze and smiles.

“I love you guys,” he says truthfully and mostly accidentally knocks Anton’s hand off his arm in the process of lifting his beer back to his mouth.

Anton doesn’t seem to notice.

* * *

Dillon wakes up by slow, painful degrees.

Apparently drunk him had at least had the decency to close the curtains last night, though when Dillon struggles upright it’s to find that apparently he hadn’t made it out of his pants or under the covers.

They’re in Minneapolis for some godforsaken reason – Porter and Hugo are touring together, Dillon had flown out to guest on a show, Anton had _just happened_ to be there. They’d had ‘something to tell him’. He wonders how much of this had been planned. How long they’d been together without him knowing, how many flirty words he’d thrown Anton’s way while they’d already been dating.

He wonders if they’d talked about _him_ , discussed how to handle Dillon and his… himself.

He feels sick, suddenly, and he barely makes it to the trash can beside the dresser.

He pukes mostly stomach acid; he hadn’t eaten last night, apparently. He doesn’t remember much after following Anton back inside except ordering everyone a round of celebratory shots. He’d been grinning so wide his cheeks had hurt and later when they filed out the door had ducked out with some flimsy excuse. Patted everyone on the back, accepted Hugo’s sweet drunken hug, ruffled Porter’s hair just because he could.

He’d gone right back inside and kept on drinking because fuck it and everything else.

He closes his eyes and leans his head against the cool wood of the dresser. Everything aches and he’s tired and if he thinks about anything too hard he wants to cry.

For a long moment he lets himself wallow. Loss and rejection are sick and cold in his chest, humiliating, _embarrassing_. He’d wanted all of them, wanted them with some kind of gauzy expectation he’d get to keep wanting them forever. That they’d be single forever, that he’d get to have the almost-touches and double-meaning words and maybe-requited affection until the sweet glow in his chest faded.

He’d been wrong and it’s his own fault.

He hauls himself upright, pushes the trashcan back against the wall and rolls carefully up to his knees. It’s effort to get to his feet but he does it, staggers into the bathroom shedding clothes behind him the whole way. Tile is cold under his feet and he winces his way to the little rug, turns on the shower with stiff hands.

He’s going to be a better friend, he resolves quietly to himself. He’s going to make up for expecting so much of them. Probably he’d been intruding anyways, making a nuisance of himself. He can do better and he _will_.

He feels better when he steps into the shower. Cleaner. A little emptier.

* * *

He’s got texts from all of them when he climbs out and digs his phone out of his pants. Anton’s sent an invitation for hangover breakfast, Porter’s sent a string of weird Japanese emoji that resolve into something he thinks probably means the same thing when he squints at it. Hugo’s is from late last night, a string of incoherence that might be drunk French and then a bunch of random emoji. He looks at them for a long time.

He wonders where they are. If they're together, if they slept together, if they're still together now. He thinks probably they are, probably someone had paid for the biggest bed they could and invited the rest. He wonders if they fucked. He's thought about it before, abstract configurations that he'd been so sure were only fantasy.

He wonders for a moment what it would be like to wake up with them. Face pressed into Hugo's shoulder or Porter's hair or Anton's chest, legs tangled together. He wants it. He wants it so badly his breath catches with the hurt of it and he has to press his fingers into his thighs until it passes.

He promises himself he’ll stop feeling that ache in his chest soon.

He’s got his manager on speed dial and he picks up on the second call, grumpy and barely awake.

“I want a tour,” he says and his manager swears at him and then hangs up.

Dillon lets him go, opens his texts again and hesitantly thumbs over to Anton.

_Im in where u feelin???_ he texts back and throws his phone on the bed. Sits down next to it in his boxers and rests his head in his hands for a long moment. Everything still hurts but he feels curiously numb.

* * *

Breakfast is quiet and Dillon practices smiling through gritted teeth. Porter and Hugo are half asleep, squinting into the sunlight, leaning on each other in the booth with sleepy unconcern. He’s pretty sure they’re holding hands under the table. Anton chides them often for being too public but he does it with soft smiles that Dillon can't look at directly.

Anton reaches out and puts his hand on Dillon's arm after the coffee is delivered and Porter's begun his daily attempt to drown himself in it, Hugo-facilitated. The touch is unpleasant déjà vu and Dillon resists the sudden need to shrug Anton's hand away.

“You okay?” he asks softly. Dillon meets his eyes and they're beautiful, he's so beautiful and Dillon loves him so much.

“Fine as hell,” he says and grins with all his teeth.

* * *

“I can get you an opener on Diplo's next tour,” his manager says hours later when he calls back. Dillon's packing to head back to Los Angeles because he can't spend another minute in fucking Minneapolis. He suspects he's going to hate this city for the rest of his life.

“Fine by me,” he says and kicks his suitcase closed. His head still hurts. “I love Wes.”

“I'm sure he loves you too,” he's informed. “Now don't call me before eight ever again unless you're literally on fire.”

“It's lit,” Dillon mutters at the call-ended beep and snickers to himself.

* * *

Home is empty and it’s nice. It’s nice, he repeats to himself and dumps his suitcase on the couch. Goes to the kitchen and opens the refrigerator. It’s almost bare but there’s a couple of eggs and some cheese and some slightly withered peppers and he pulls them out, throws them together in a pan until it’s somewhat edible.

He eats in silence and wonders what he’s supposed to be feeling. He’s still mostly numb.

Briefly he glances at the suitcase still balanced precariously on the couch and then heads to bed.

* * *

He doesn’t check the details of the tour for a few days so when Hugo texts him he doesn’t have a chance to brace himself when he opens it.

_Tour buddies!!!_ , it says and then a string of fire emoji, and Dillon stares at it with something that he thinks might be the true opposite to joy in his chest. Sick, empty, sinking panic.

When he checks the lineup it’s to find he’s opening for Diplo and Hugo’s opening for _him_.

“Fuck,” he whispers and reaches for his whiskey.

* * *

Wes greets him at load-up with a hug that’s typical Wes, a little uncomfortable, impersonal. It makes Dillon laugh, barked-out and kind of harsh and Wes squints at him for a moment but it’s too busy to talk. Dillon ducks away before Wes can ask any questions.

He’s on a mission, a mission to avoid meeting Hugo.

He makes it onto the bus that Hugo’s not, settles into a corner and makes stupid, meaningless small talk with the crew that settle around him. It’s a little excruciating but half of them are barely awake and the other half are hungover and they go quiet eventually. He’s left to fiddle with his phone, scrolling Twitter for something to do. Anton’s posted a selfie.

Dillon lingers for half a second and pokes gingerly at the edges of the hollow ache in his chest.

He keeps scrolling.

The bus sways gently.

* * *

They stop for lunch and somehow when they load back up Hugo’s on Dillon’s bus.

Dillon doesn’t notice until the bus is lurching into motion, Hugo’s sliding in to sit on the tiny couch next to him in a tangle of long limbs and awkward grace. It’s too late to run and for a moment he panics, watches Hugo trying to counterbalance the motion of the bus and wonders if he’s figured out that Dillon’s been avoiding him.

Hugo turns, smiles broad and uncomplicated and Dillon relaxes just a little.

“I missed you at load-up,” Hugo says and Dillon doesn’t even have to fake the rueful smile very much.

“It was fucking busy, dude. I told Wes to say hi if he saw you though,” he lies. Hugo rolls his eyes, nods, shrugs eloquently.

“Wes was,” and Hugo pauses contemplatively. “Hmm.”

“Sounds like him,” Dillon says and Hugo laughs, quiet, a little sneaky and a little guilty. Dillon watches him, the little lines at the corners of his eyes, the flash of teeth. It’s an echo of the hollow ache of before but somehow a bit better, less bitter and more sweet. He’d done that. He’d made Hugo laugh. He can do that at least.

Hugo pulls his DS out a moment later, hesitates and then settles back against the arm of the couch. He pulls his legs up too and somehow his feet end up pressed against Dillon’s thigh. Dillon tries not to notice, goes back to fidgeting with his phone idly.

Long moments pass in relative quiet and he relaxes eventually.

“Hey,” Hugo says quietly, maybe an hour later. Dillon looks up hazily. He’d been sort of dozing, staring at nothing in particular. He hasn’t been sleeping the greatest lately.

“Mmm?” he hums in reply. Hugo’s watching him with something a little intense and Dillon finds himself waking quickly.

“Thank you,” Hugo says and when Dillon squints at him he ducks his head over his DS, cheeks pinking a bit. “For being okay with, you know. Thank you.”

Dillon understands in a brilliant bloom of aching rejection and it’s a struggle not to drop his gaze. A bigger struggle not to scramble to his feet and take off running even though there’s nowhere to go. He hates this, he _hates_ being thanked for this, and for a hysterical moment he wonders if they’re doing it on purpose.

He pulls himself together.

“Of course,” he says and drops a limp hand to nudge against Hugo’s leg. Hugo grins at him, brilliant and pleased, and Dillon smiles back weakly before turning back to his phone.

Jake’s texted him and it’s a grainy picture of his studio and a bowl of cereal he’d dropped all over the floor. Dillon focuses on that instead, taps out a careful reply and tries not to think.

* * *

The shows aren’t the hardest thing Dillon’s ever done but they’re not what he’d wanted either. He’d hoped for a distraction. This isn’t it.

* * *

Dillon snaps a picture of Hugo mid-jump, hair wild around his face, arms up, mouth open to yell at the crowd. He looks gorgeous in the stage lighting and Dillon maybe hates himself a little for saving it when he’s thinking things like that. He reassures himself it’s something friends do, have pictures of each other on their phone.

He sends it to Anton and Porter, captions it _your boyfriend_.

An hour later Porter texts back and it’s a simple heart emoji. When Dillon checks his phone and sees the notification for a moment he doesn’t understand, doesn’t _remember_ , and his heart is rising in his chest. There’s dumb joy like a physical taste in his mouth, simple and sweet.

He opens the text and context crashes back through him in a moment and he tucks his phone away without answering. Suddenly his body feels so heavy.

* * *

He’s lucky it’s a short tour.

He can make it three weeks, eighteen shows in as many cities, dodging Hugo where he can and smiling falsely when he can’t. He’s still not sleeping well and he makes up for it with cups of coffee so big that that the crew laughs at him for it and Hugo stares with some level of disapproval.

Dillon briefly, absently considers some vicious remark about Porter, about how Hugo should mind his own fucking boyfriend before deigning to worry about him. He doesn’t like himself for it.

He doesn’t like himself for a lot of reasons but he’s getting really good at not thinking about it.

* * *

Two thirds of the way through they have an overnight stopover and don’t have to leave early the next morning. It’s an excuse to party and he’s carried along by the crowd after the show, pulled into the chosen club by laughing people that know his name even though he’s too tired and unwilling to focus on who they are. He smiles with them, takes a hand that pulls him past the bouncer, fetches up in a group of fans that he ducks out of with a grace he didn’t know he had in him.

He’s already a little drunk.

The club’s remarkably quiet and Dillon wonders dimly what Wes did to secure that but then he spots Hugo’s familiar frame across the dancefloor and he can’t remember why he’d been thinking about Wes at all.

Hugo’s sharp-edged and enigmatic in the dim light of the club, dark-eyed and tall and elfin. His hair is loose and long and Dillon’s hand twitches for a moment. He wants to reach out and run his fingers through it. He almost can’t reconcile his old memories of Hugo with what he looks like now, until he sees Dillon looking and waves him over with a smile.

The smile’s the same. Sweet, all-encompassing.

Dillon goes despite himself. Hugo welcomes him into the group his standing with, smile turning warmer as he comes closer, thrilling in a way Dillon shoves away drunkenly as soon as he registers it. Not his, not for him, he can’t have it anymore.

When Hugo reaches out to wrap an octopus arm around his shoulders he lets it be, reasoning to himself that if he were to shrug it away it’d cause too much of a scene. It’s nice anyway. He’s been feeling cold for days and Hugo’s warm.

“What’s up?” he asks over the music and Hugo gestures him to the group, introductions that Dillon doesn’t bother paying much attention to. They’re fans, or at least clubgoers that vaguely recognize who he is, because they seem perfectly enthused to meet him. He shakes a hand, takes a proffered couple of hugs, turns down something fluorescent in a clear plastic cup shaped like a goblet.

Hugo’s chattering with one of the girls enthusiastically, something rapid-fire and French. Dillon lets the warm sound of Hugo’s voice shaping the lyrical syllables fade into the background. His arm is still warm around his shoulders and Dillon lets that be. He can have this much. It’s friendly. Anyways the kids are sweet, have questions that almost border on the intelligent to ask about the music and the producing scene, it’s _nice_.

He’s brought crashing back to earth when Hugo’s arm tightens around his shoulders, dragging his attention into the conversation Hugo had been having.

“So how’s the love life?” the girl asks in English, far too loudly, and Dillon turns his head in time to catch the complicated flash of emotion that passes over Hugo’s face. It’s a little sad but there’s a glow there that hurts to see, some flash of contentment. There’s a memory behind it that Dillon isn’t privy to.

“I’m so busy with the music,” Hugo says with a practiced smile and the girl asking laughs, fooled, turns to Dillon. He jolts at the eyes suddenly on him and then forces a laugh. He wonders if Hugo’s sober enough to feel how abruptly tight his body is with tension.

“Single and ready to fuckin’ mingle,” he smirks and winks and when the girl blushes and bobs a nod he ducks out of Hugo’s hold. Briefly he turns back, presses into Hugo’s side and leans in. It feels nice and he makes an effort not to breathe in, not to make himself a nuisance. 

He’s being a good friend.

“I’m getting a drink,” he says, and Hugo nods and pats his shoulder as Dillon walks away.

The bartender snorts when Dillon tells her he’s in love and it sucks but what she hands him when he asks melodramatically for something to make the pain go away is strong enough to make him wince when he takes a sip. She grins at him and he smiles back and for a moment it feels alright. The illusion is gone a moment later when he turns away, surveys the room for where he wants to be.

The answer is nowhere. He doesn’t want to be here.

His eyes keep catching on Hugo – he’s tall, hair wild, his profile so unique – but Dillon hurts just thinking about talking to him now.

He wonders briefly, bitterly, if Anton or Porter would answer if he called.

There’s an open table and set of stools in one corner and Dillon heads to it, perches on the lowest one and knocks his heels against the floor. Everything is dim and loud and he’s sure he’s felt lonelier before but he’s a little drunk and nothing specific is coming to mind. The room is spinning and he’s not sure how much of it is the drinking and how much is the way he can’t get his lungs to inflate quite right.

“This is a party,” Wes says and thumps back against the table. Dillon jumps, barely rights himself in time. “Shouldn’t you be partying or something?”

“Not in the mood,” Dillon says, hopes it comes off as melancholy instead of rude. Wes grins, teeth flashing like a wolf’s in the neon lights. He isn’t offended but Dillon almost wishes he had been so he’d leave Dillon the fuck _alone_.

“Drink until you are,” Wes suggests archly and when Dillon salutes him with his cup in halfway sarcastic answer he laughs. The drink he takes sends warmth through his chest but it’s a hollow feeling.

“No offense,” he says when he’s set his cup back down, leaning in a little to be heard more easily. “But why are you here? Shouldn’t you be chasing some pretty blonde or something?”

“Heard you got girl trouble,” Wes says and Dillon twitches to look at him, catches him thumbing over his shoulder at the bartender.

He understands too quickly, doesn’t have the chance to stop himself looking.

Hugo’s still standing with the group from before, bobbing in place to a faint beat, and as Dillon watches his arm flashes out in a broad gesture, his head tilting back in a laugh. It makes something shift in Dillon’s chest, a quake of want that shakes him until he has to pull in a breath that hurts. He’s gorgeous, spindly fingers and broad palms flashing in bare lights, he looks unreal. He looks unreachable.

Someone hands Hugo a cup and his hands look like sin wrapping around it.

Dillon tears his eyes away from Hugo and finds Wes watching him with startled eyes and a smile that’s got an edge of mockery.

“Boy trouble, then,” Wes says and he sounds a little surprised but mostly gleeful. A little bit cruel. Dillon shrugs, lifts his cup of whatever it is and takes another drink for something to do. He knows what Wes is like, it shouldn’t surprise him at this point.

“Whatever,” he says.

“I’ve seen you with him but I thought it was just you being, you know,” Wes says and waves a languid, vaguely insulting hand. Dillon snorts breathily and shrugs again. Takes another drink because the flare of humiliation in his chest is far from pleasant.

“Being me,” he fills in, hoarse. Wes inclines his head. He’s watching Dillon too closely.

“I didn’t think you were actually, y’know, like that,” he says after a beat of silence and Dillon takes a moment to thank any power that might be listening that the party is loud and he’d been sulking in the quietest corner.

“I’m not gay,” he says and it comes out annoyed. “It’s not the sixties, Wes, I just… like people.”

Wes shrugs eloquently. He hasn’t stopped watching Dillon, pale eyes over the rim of his cup, and it’s a little uncomfortable. Dillon wishes he’d go away and leave him to wallow.

“Whatever,” Dillon mumbles and knuckles at his eye for a moment. He hasn’t cried – not for all of this, not once – but his eyes feel itchy and swollen like he’s been crying all night.

When he brings his hand down Wes is close, way too close.

Dillon hadn’t heard him moving but suddenly he’s there, so close Dillon can feel body heat pressing into his chest. It’s intimidating and Wes isn’t bigger than him but he can feel himself shrinking down anyway. The way Wes is looking at him is wholly terrifying but somehow not unfamiliar. Calculating, considering, he’d looked almost the same way when Dillon had agreed to sign with him.

“Come up to my room,” Wes offers and Dillon chokes on absolutely nothing.

“What the _fuck_?” he demands and Wes grins.

“At least _someone_ wants you,” he says softly.

Dillon flinches. For a moment he can’t breathe.

“That was fucking uncalled for,” he snaps when he can make his lungs inflate again. Wes shrugs. He’s still smiling, catlike and mean.

“Sorry,” he says, and doesn’t sound very apologetic. “Just trying to help.”

Dillon takes a steadying breath. He wants to be angry but the misery is thick and choking and cloying in his chest and the alcohol is taking care of everything else, drowning out anything that isn’t cold hurt and loneliness. It’s not like Wes is even wrong, really, he isn’t wanted by the ones that matter.

“You don’t even want me,” he says because he knows that much at least is true. Wes has never ever given indication he was into dicks, much less _Dillon’s_.

Wes shrugs.

“You have a decent body,” he says and Dillon jumps at Wes’s hand, suddenly pressing against his shoulder. He shivers. “Won’t get pregnant, won’t talk to any fucking reporters. I won’t have to cuddle you after.” Wes laughs. “Fuck, maybe I should date you.”

“Fuck you,” Dillon says.

Wes’s hand slides down his back, lingers in the dip of his spine, proprietary in a way Dillon isn’t sure he likes but can’t bring himself to shove away. It feels good to be touched in a way that isn’t the purposeless jostling of a dancing crowd or the impersonal, friendly pats on the back that the crew favor. Even if it’s Wes, even if he’s pretty sure he’s being told he’s only being propositioned because he’s easy.

“If you want to try your luck with the French kid instead,” Wes says and retracts his hand. He’s gone before Dillon can sort out what he wants to say, before he can sort out if he wants to do anything at all. He’s left in his corner like he thought he’d wanted to but now he’s cold where Wes had been touching him and the loneliness is stinging even more.

He looks across the room at Hugo again despite himself.

Hugo’s just pulling out his phone, laughing at something someone said. His face, lit up by the glow from the screen, softens as he reads whatever it is. Dillon knows the expression. The hollowness in his chest expands just a little bit more.

He considers going back over to him. Starting a conversation. They’re friends, he and Hugo, even with the way Dillon suddenly can’t find the place he was supposed to fit anymore. He might even get a hug at the end of the night, one of Hugo’s sweet drunk octopus-imitations.

He looks back down at the cup in his hand. It’s a quarter full still and he downs it, heads for the door and pulls out his phone as he goes. He can bum a smoke from someone outside.

_Where’s ur room,_ he texts.

* * *

Dillon comes to in a dark hotel room.

For a long moment all he can feel is the tugging, exhausted sickness of a truly stunning hangover. He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t remember how he got here. When he blinks his eyes open the room’s spinning enough that he’s pretty sure he’s still a little drunk. Nausea is a slow roil in his gut, a threat of impending vomit if he tries to move too quickly.

There’s a warm arm around his waist. His muscles ache.

He smells like sex, he realizes when he tries lifting a clumsy hand to scrub at his swollen eyes. When he shifts he can feel the ache in him, insidious and empty, the pain of having been used very thoroughly last night.

Wes, Dillon remembers.

He gets the heel of his hand up to his eye. Everything hurts, a little bit sideways and sickening.

He drops his hand back against the pillow and Wes makes a soft, displeased noise. His hand is against Dillon’s abdomen. His body against Dillon’s back, hot, stifling against Dillon’s feverish skin. His dick is pressed against Dillon’s ass and it’s not hard exactly but…

Abruptly Dillon thinks he’s going to be sick, everything in the room swooping around him at once.

He goes to move Wes’s hand off him. Wes makes a sharper displeased noise and Dillon grumbles back, gets a better grip and resists the urge to throw Wes off him. Resists the urge to hiss _thought you didn’t want a cuddle_ at him snidely. He just wants to _leave_.

“Bathroom,” he mumbles and Wes lets go. Dillon stumbles to his feet and trips over his jeans on the way to the bathroom door.

The bathroom is cold and too bright when he flips the light on, locking the door behind him. The tile stings his feet and the ache inside him is worse now, blossoming as he leans slowly against the wall. He doesn’t want to see himself in the mirror. He feels bad and he can’t imagine he looks any better.

Eventually he slides down to sit on the floor. He’s wearing his underwear at least, though the floor is hard and radiating cold through the cotton.

He can’t hide in a bathroom forever.

He curls forward, rests his face against his knees and stays for a moment. He doesn’t regret it, exactly, but he can feel in the silence and the aching just how very alone he is. He’d known Wes wasn’t interested in _him_ as much as a warm place to put his dick – Wes had never lied about that, not that Dillon would have expected any better from him anyway.

He’s still… lonely.

He climbs to his feet eventually, hauls himself up with the edge of the counter.

In the mirror he looks so tired. His hair's a mess and he hasn’t shaved in long enough that his scruff has grown from excusable to objectionable. His face is pale and his cheeks are flushed and there are dark circles under his eyes. It’s not a pretty picture and a surge of self-loathing roils up through the nausea, makes him gag a little before he turns away.

The lock clicks when he opens it again and he pads back to the bed. Wes hasn’t moved and Dillon dips to reach for his jeans. His keys and his cards are scattered on the ground a foot away, his phone a bulge in the back pocket. At least he hasn’t lost anything.

“Did you puke?” Wes asks from the bed, voice rough with sleep, and Dillon jumps. He’d honestly thought he’d be asleep.

“…no?” he answers eventually, surprise making it a question.

Wes makes a displeased noise and rolls over, lifts a corner of the blanket. Dillon stares at him.

“Are you coming to bed or not,” Wes grunts, a little more awake, significantly more grumpy.

Dillon keeps staring.

For a second he doesn’t understand the feeling rolling through his chest. It’s big and hurtful and a bit humiliating and for a moment he thinks he’s going to cry. He doesn’t want to. He hasn’t cried yet, hasn’t given in to that. He swallows thickly.

It’s pathetic gratitude, that’s what he’s feeling. Gratitude that Wes is offering this to him, even though he’s sure it’s just so he can be there to suck him off in the morning. Gratitude that he won’t have to be alone. Like Wes had said, at least _someone_ wants him.

The stinging in his chest subsides when he climbs carefully in beside Wes. It’s a shocking thing, the sudden void where the cold loneliness had been. Shockingly good, he shudders when Wes’s hot arm yanks him back against him.

He closes his eyes and lets the dizzy spin of his hangover drag him back to unconsciousness. It could be worse.

* * *

It’s not every night after that, or even most nights. It’s occasional, and Dillon doesn’t miss that Wes only texts him when it’s too late to pick someone up. He’s convenient and he knows it, is under no illusions otherwise. He doesn’t like to think about it but whenever Wes texts him – a room number most of the time, brief and to the point, Dillon almost admires it – he goes.

He’s well away he’s being used but when Wes is fucking him he feels wanted and it’s better than being alone.

Hugo’s picked up on it, he thinks. Wes is more proprietary now, touches Dillon like he’s never done before. When he does, throws an arm around Dillon’s waist or grabs him by the wrist, Hugo looks at them and there’s something disapproving in the cast of his mouth. Dillon doesn’t look too closely. It’s not what he _wants_ it to mean so he ignores it.

The last night of the tour is wild and Wes tells him to come to his room before the show this time, a first. He fucks Dillon over the end of the bed and it hurts in the best way. He goes onstage with his ass aching and a smile on his face and plays the best show he’s played in his life.

He doesn’t stop smiling until Hugo finds him at the afterparty. Hugs him, tight and familiar. He smells like sweat and alcohol and the ache isn’t so satisfying anymore. He just feels empty, and used, and unwanted.

“You’re such a good friend,” Hugo slurs to him.

He knows he isn’t.

* * *

He goes home to his empty house, again. It’s harder to convince himself he wants it now. Easier to just throw everything on the floor and go to bed.

Hugo’s been posting on Twitter, he discovers when he’s crawled under the covers and opened twitter. He’s tweeted something about home, about being happy to be back with people he loves. Dillon’s pretty sure he isn’t in France.

He tries to convince himself he’s happy for him, happy for all of them. He is, in the end. They’re good together, it’s obvious.

He tosses his phone onto the nightstand and curls up and wonders dully if Wes is in town, if he will be soon. If he’ll want Dillon again now that the tour’s over. It’s a little worrying how much anxiety rises in his chest at the thought that he might not, that he might be done with Dillon too.

He pushes the thought away.

* * *

Wes calls him a week later, says he’s in Los Angeles, tells him he can come over if he wants. Dillon doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know what it means even to himself. 

He shows up halfway to drunk with a bottle of lube and Wes shows him in with that laugh that makes Dillon’s insides curl on themselves. He’s getting attached to this in some animal way, he’s well aware. But when Wes is reaching out and moving Dillon how he wants him it feels just like being wanted, impersonal and uncaring as he is.

The touch is so good. Being wanted feels so _good_.

He’s facedown because that’s the way Wes likes him best and Dillon likes it because with Wes inside him, so full and good, he can pretend it’s anyone.

It’s Porter’s fingers stretching him open. It’s Anton’s hands on his hips, Anton’s cock pressing into him with ruthless slowness. It’s Hugo, Hugo pressing him down into the mattress and thrusting into him with brutal rhythm. It could be any of them, he can pretend and he knows it’s unhealthy and wrong but it feels so good, it’s so _good_.

Hands lift him more, haul him back against the cock inside him, grind in so deep Dillon’s eyes roll back with it. For a moment all he can do is hiss out guttural noises that don’t even vaguely resemble words. He can’t think, when he can speak he’s babbling mindless words about how good it is, how much he wants more and deeper and harder, Anton, _Anton_.

Wes laughs in his ear and Dillon cries out. There’s a hand in his hair, he’s being pressed back down into the bed. It feels so good and he digs his nails into the sheets.

“He’s not here,” Wes whispers and Dillon sobs. It hurts but the cock sliding into him feels too good and he lets it spin away. Wes is here. Wes wants him, that’s enough.

He rolls his hips back into Wes’s next thrust.

* * *

“Anton too?” Wes asks when Dillon comes out of his bathroom later on. Dillon pauses, frozen not in panic so much as an inability to imagine what he should say. Wes sounds amused, maybe even more so than when he'd found out about Hugo. In a way Dillon can see why. It's a little hilarious, how pathetically gone he is on so many of them.

He shrugs and resumes toweling off his hair. Wes laughs.

“Anyone else I should know about?” Wes asks idly and Dillon should have expected it but he stops again guiltily anyway. He thinks about the three of them in the booth across from him, an abrupt flash of what they'd looked like. Beautiful. His mouth tastes like ash when he finally throws his towel aside and looks at Wes.

“Who?” Wes asks. He's still smiling. Dillon drops his gaze and shrugs.

“Porter,” he admits in a hoarse voice. Belatedly he realizes how good it feels to say aloud.

“Huh,” Wes says and turns away. “Should have guessed probably.”

Dillon dips to pick up his shirt from the floor.

“Probably.”

* * *

Porter texts him a week later.

Wes is gone and Dillon doesn’t like the fact that it’s the first thing he thinks of when he sees the text notification on his screen. He flicks the text open instead of examining the thought, pushes it away and to the back of his head. He’s been pushing things away for so long, so many things. What’s one more?

_Gonna be in LA in a few days_ , it says. His phone buzzes and another text pops up before he’s even finished processing the first. _Wanna chill_ , it reads. 

He hauls in a breath and closes his eyes.

_Sure when???_ he texts back and then sets his phone down on the table and walks away and doesn’t come back for two hours. Drifts around his house instead, picking things up off the floor and putting them away. There’s shaking anxiety in his veins, something that makes his fingers cold.

He has to laugh, eventually. He’s so fucked up over this. It’s pathetic and a little ridiculous.

When he goes back and picks up the phone there’s a text waiting for him.

_Tues n Wed. Should I get a hotel??_ it reads.

_Nah u can stay w me_ , Dillon’s texting back before he can think it through because that’s what he’d always answered before. He’d have added something else too, a teasing reference to Spoon Ü or something, maybe joke that he's having work done on the guest room so Porter will have to bunk with him.

_Guest bed is always open!!_ he adds and then hits send and leaves his phone on the table for another hour.

He’s being a good friend.

* * *

He picks Porter up from the airport.

Porter looks like hell and Dillon watches him from the corner of his eye with concern.

He’s tired-looking, eyes heavy, unshaven. His hair is tucked into his beanie but he suspects Porter’s skipped a shower or two, and he wonders why. He’s still beautiful, of course he is. Dillon’s as far gone on him as he is on all of them, gets a hot rush of need in his chest just looking at him. He just looks unhappy and Dillon doesn’t know why.

It feels oddly foreign, this new worry about something that isn’t his own troubles. It’s welcome. Maybe he can help Porter.

He certainly isn’t doing a very good job of helping himself.

“How’s shit?” he asks brightly and Porter shrugs, flashes a smile that’s patently false.

“Let’s get some fucking In-N-Out,” he suggests.

Dillon shrugs and turns out of the airport parking lot.

* * *

He fills the quiet of the drive back from In-N-Out, chatters about nothing in particular over Porter’s silence. It’s easy, he’s _good_ at talking. Porter seems to appreciate it at least, his smile comes easier and easier and he starts talking back a little, inserts his tart opinion on Joel’s latest Twitter argument, offers Dillon a bite of burger.

Dillon’s proud of himself so of course he fucks it up.

He’s been avoiding asking about Hugo and Anton, even though he misses them and he knows he’d have asked before. It just hurts a little bit to think about the fact Porter’s probably fresh from visiting one of them. He doesn’t want to see the soft smile he thinks Porter will probably have, talking about them.

He can’t help himself though.

“So how are the boyfriends?” he asks and manages to keep his tone light even if his hands are tight on the steering wheel. He braces himself for whatever Porter has to say.

Porter’s silent.

Eventually Dillon glances over, frowning. Porter’s staring out the windshield and his eyes are dangerously blank, his mouth a tight line. He doesn’t look angry or even sad, he looks… tired. Something turns over in Dillon’s stomach, a flicker of panic and fear because as much as his chest aches when he thinks about them together, _without him_ …

He wants them to be happy.

They’re happy together, he’d seen it. Happy and loved and he wants that for them, he does. It scares the fuck out of him to think of them _not_ being happy, to think they might be hurting. It’s what he’s been holding on to, that if he can’t be with them, any of them, at least they’re with each other and happy and he gets their friendship, which is almost enough.

Is. It _is_ enough.

Porter blinks and shakes himself, glances back at Dillon.

“They’re good,” he mutters and looks back down at his lap.

* * *

Porter spends an hour in the bathroom when they get to Dillon’s place and Dillon takes the time to order a pizza, to lean against the kitchen counter and try to slow his heartbeat. It’s hard, there’s so much happening in his head. The thick anxiety of Porter in his home, that he’ll be so close to him for the next two days, that he’ll inevitably be caught staring and have to form some weak excuse for how he can’t stop his eyes gravitating to Porter. The new, sharp fear of whatever it is Porter’s running from – because he is, Dillon’s pretty sure now, he’s at Dillon’s because he doesn’t want to be somewhere else.

He’s fine with being used like that, he’d do anything for Porter, but he wants to help more.

Porter comes back out in old clothes, loose and soft with age, toweling damp hair out of his eyes. Dillon drags his eyes away from collarbones and shower-pink skin. He’s misbehaving already, making himself too obvious. Being a bad friend.

He thinks it would be so easy to step over there, put his hands on Porter’s cheeks. Guide their mouths together. He can’t stop thinking about Porter’s mouth suddenly, how soft it looks. He thinks it’d feel good, so good, for a moment he’s dizzy with how much he wants to know what Porter’s kisses are like. It’d be so easy to do it, and he wants it so badly, and it’ll ruin so much.

Bad, bad friend.

“There’ll be pizza soon,” he tells the cabinets across from him. Porter nods in his peripherals, pads past Dillon to poke through his fridge. He nudges Dillon in the arm in passing, companionable, and Dillon breathes out, follows him over. There’s beer in the fridge but Porter bypasses it, snags a bottle of Coke and steps back. Dillon goes for the beer; he feels like he’ll need it.

“We should watch something,” Porter says around the mouth of the Coke bottle.

_We should talk,_ Dillon wants to say.

“Yeah, sure,” he says instead.

* * *

The movie they end up settling on is colorful, a comedy, something he thinks neither of them are feeling but both maybe need. He’s certainly not really watching it, and something about the blank absence of Porter’s expression when he glances over says he’s not really watching it either.

He lasts an hour of silence except for the movie, increasingly tense. The beer hadn’t helped in any appreciable way. He wants to _help_ , to ease whatever’s burdening Porter down like this, he just doesn’t know what it is.

Porter looks at him when he turns his body, gets his knee up on the couch until he’s sitting sideways facing him. His expression is vague and empty and somehow worse for not being miserable. Dillon had known he wasn’t happy but he hadn’t known it was this bad. He looks away again, back at the movie. He’s still not watching it, he’s just staring at the screen.

“Dude, you have to talk to me,” Dillon says, aims for something at least a little light. The staccato burst of a laugh track in the background helps, diffuses the burden of the heaviness in Porter’s eyes. “I can’t help you out if you don’t tell me what’s up.”

Porter doesn’t respond for a long time. Doesn’t look back at Dillon either, stares at the television screen for a long time and then slowly tilts his head down to look at his hands. They’re twisted in his lap, knuckles going white with how hard they’re clutched together. Dillon can’t read his expression, just the shine of the movie reflecting from his eyes, the tightness of his mouth.

“Porter,” he prompts at last and Porter’s eyes close with a motion too much like a flinch.

He’s so beautiful. Dillon looks at him and can’t help thinking it, even now, even with the fear running through him of whatever is hurting Porter so badly. He’s beautiful, and Dillon hadn’t forgotten but like this it’s impossible to avoid. He wants to reach out and take Porter’s face in his hands, to hold him together like that.

It’s not his. He’s being a good friend.

“I don’t…” Porter says at last and his eyes open again. He still doesn’t turn his head. Dillon still can’t read him. “I don’t know. I’m just… ungrateful. I think.”

“I don’t understand,” Dillon says after a moment, careful, confused.

Porter lets out a breath too soft to call a sigh. It’s not a happy noise and Dillon almost reaches out for him, stops himself at the last minute.

“They’re amazing,” Porter says, quiet, almost inaudible. It takes Dillon a moment to work out who _they_ must be. For once the rush of bitter hurt is almost minimal; he’s scared for Porter, too scared to care so much.

“Did you,” Dillon begins and pauses, forces himself to go on after a moment. “Are you all… still together?”

Porter jolts and he finally turns to look at Dillon. His expression is shocked, miserable, a little bit frightened. He looks small, pulled in on himself in a way that pains Dillon to see, like he’s trying to hide inside himself, make himself harder to see.

“Fuck, yes,” he says, “No, we’re still. We’re still dating.”

“Oh,” Dillon breathes, relief pouring through him like rain. “That’s… good.”

Porter looks back down, at his hands still clenched so tightly around each other. He’s still rigid with tension, looks like he’s in physical pain. When Dillon reaches out hesitantly and lays a hand on his shoulder he shudders in a way that looks involuntary. He pulls himself in even farther but Dillon doesn’t move his hand.

“Porter, c’mon,” he whispers.

Porter is still for a long moment more and then he’s breathing out in a rush and loosening up, his hand coming up to scrub at his cheek.

“I feel like I don’t deserve them,” he says quietly and Dillon almost doesn’t hear it. He can’t believe it for a moment after, can’t process it. He can’t understand why Porter, beautiful impossible Porter, would ever think he didn’t deserve to be loved.

“Oh,” he says again, and this time it’s in sympathetic hurt.

Porter turns to look at him and his eyes look glassy and Dillon realizes with a sick jolt he's about to start crying.

Porter makes a soft, surprised noise when Dillon gets his arm around him. He goes easily though, tucks himself into Dillon's side and sniffles quietly. He's warm and he smells like popcorn and some cologne Dillon vaguely suspects has kanji on the bottle.

He fits so well, warm and soft. Dillon swallows down the hopeless swell of longing and rubs a hand on Porter's shoulder.

“Sometimes it's hard to believe I deserve to be this happy, y'know?” Porter says quietly. Dillon bites back the words he'd been haphazardly putting together, some meaningless sentiment along the lines of _everything will be alright_.

He understands something about this, maybe.

“You deserve to be happy,” he whispers fiercely. Porter makes a little noise in response, some combined sob and laugh, and curls up into Dillon's side even tighter. The longing in him resolves into something sharp and urgent, the aching need to reach out and gather Porter to him and hold him until the hurt goes away.

It's not his. Porter isn't his, this isn't his. He tightens his arm around him anyway.

Porter doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t try to move either and the movie wears on, colorful and noisy in the background. Dillon keeps his eyes on the screen. It’s something to focus on that isn’t Porter so warm and heavy against his side, that isn’t how much he wants to rest his cheek in Porter’s hair. Press a kiss to his forehead, his cheek, everywhere.

He closes his eyes for a moment and then opens them. He’s being a good friend.

* * *

Dillon doesn’t know when Porter falls asleep but by the time the credits roll he’s snoring, little sleepy noises Dillon hates for how endearing they are. He doesn’t wake when Dillon shifts him carefully off of him, slips easily down to snuggle into the warm space Dillon leaves behind.

Porter's a warm weight in his arms when he slides an arm under his legs and back and lifts. He goes easily, reaches out in his sleep and gets a hand in Dillon's shirt. Dillon looks at it for a second, his awkwardly delicate wrist and freckled skin. He wants to kiss it. He wants to know what it feels like to kiss him, wants it with hopeless strength.

He takes in a deep breath and shakes his head once. Pushes the soft want back under the surface.

Porter's still asleep when Dillon gets him onto the guest bed, stays asleep as Dillon pulls off his shoes. He hesitates for a long moment and then pulls the blanket over him, clothes and all. Padding down the hall back to his room is a cold journey and he climbs into bed immediately, kicks off his pants and buries himself under the blankets.

“I love you,” he whispers into his pillow, to the ghost of his memory of what Porter had felt like asleep in his arms. It hurts. He closes his eyes against it.

* * *

“Thank you,” Porter says the next morning, sleepy-eyed and clumsy. He’s holding a mug of coffee to his lips and Dillon can’t look at him.

He’d dreamed last night, he doesn’t remember about what. He’d woken up in the early morning with a feeling in his lung like he’d been crying but his cheeks were dry when he reached up to touch them.

He’s too fucked up over this. He hates it.

“For what?” he asks absently and pokes at the sausage frying in the pan absently. He genuinely doesn’t remember for a long moment until Porter shrugs in his peripheral and his expression when Dillon looks up is an echo of the heavy sadness of last night.

“Last night,” Porter says and doesn’t meet Dillon’s eyes. He jolts when Dillon steps over and wraps a careful arm around his shoulders, but he relaxes a bit and that’s what matters.

He’s being a good friend, he reminds himself, gritting his teeth.

“Dude, of course,” he says out loud and shakes Porter a little bit before stepping back to the stove to try to rescue the sausages. “I meant it, y’know,” he tells the burner. “You should fucking… you should talk to them about it, alright?”

Porter’s quiet for a long time, the sound of him lifting the mug to his lips and taking a sip.

“I’ll… I’ll try,” he says quietly. Dillon nods and dishes the sausages up on two plates, turns to hand it over.

Porter’s watching him with sad eyes but he takes the food with a murmur of thanks.

* * *

Porter leaves again Wednesday morning, waving goodbye as he climbs into the Uber. Dillon leans against the doorframe for a moment and feels down into the weight on his chest. Tries to understand what he’s feeling.

He waves back as the car pulls away and then goes back inside.

He feels…

He looks at the mess of pizza boxes in his trash can. The mussed couch, the dishes in the sink. The DVD cases on the coffee table, the door to the guest bedroom ajar so he can see the unmade bed. He goes in for a moment, straightens out the covers. There’s a shirt on the floor, half-hidden under the bedside table, and when he dips to pick it up he discovers it’s not his.

It’s Porter’s. He runs it through his hands absently. It’d smell like him, probably.

He throws it in the washing machine and goes back to his room.

There’s no text from Wes – hasn’t been for a while, though Dillon’s pretty sure he’s in LA – so he hesitates for a moment before sending one.

_U in town?_

He lays down in bed, stares at the ceiling. He’s tired, he thinks. It doesn’t seem worth it to sleep.

His phone vibrates a moment later. It’s heavy when he lifts it to squint at the screen.

_You know where I live,_ it says, and Dillon can practically hear Wes’s mean little laugh. He closes his eyes for a moment and then propels himself to his feet. He’ll shower before he goes, maybe pick up some lube.

* * *

Wes has a hand on his ass as soon as he’s in the door.

“Rude,” Dillon jokes weakly, twisting away. “Maybe I just came over to work on music shit, you don’t fucking know me.”

Wes laughs at him. Dillon drops his gaze.

“Sure,” he says and steps away, turns to head in the direction Dillon knows the bedroom is. “Sure you did.”

* * *

Porter texts him a day or so later, when the bruises have started to fade. 

_You were right,_ is all it says. 

Dillon reads it a few times, wonders if they’d talked. He hopes so. 

He hopes Porter’s happy. He hopes they’re all happy.

* * *

There’s an award show. 

Dillon almost wants to laugh. For once the music isn’t the first thing on his mind; he barely pays attention to who’s nominated. Wes is, of course - fucking Jack Ü, Dillon really is happy for Wes and Sonny but it’s the stupidest fucking name - and Anton too. 

He texts Wes with his usual demand to be his plus-one. Wes texts back within an hour and Dillon has to laugh when he opens it, bitter and amused. 

_We’re not dating,_ it says. 

_Ill put out,_ he texts back, and he’s said it before - before they’d started this, before any of this had happened - so he doesn’t know why the idea makes him feel a little sick now. It’s not like he hasn’t had Wes’s dick in his mouth already. He’s sure if Wes doesn’t pick someone up at the afterparty he’ll be going home with him anyway. 

_I’m holding you to that,_ is the reply. 

Dillon laughs again and goes to poke through his collection of suits.

* * *

The award show is just as excruciating as he’d expected it to be. Too many speeches, too many people he doesn’t know or care about. He’s only here to keep up appearances anyway, to keep people from asking him what’s wrong. 

He stays at Wes’s table, keeps drinking. Smiles and makes small talk with anyone that approaches. 

Anton’s there but he doesn’t come over during the ceremony itself. He keeps to his own table, though when he sees Dillon he beams and waves enthusiastically. Dillon waves back, smiles big enough that it’ll look real from a distance, and turns back to talking to Wes’s other tablemates. 

He wonders where Hugo and Porter are. He kind of misses them- really misses them. He wants to see them all again, even though he knows it’ll hurt. 

He resolves to himself as Wes comes back from accepting his award that he’ll get them all together for something. He needs to get better about seeing them, he really does. He can’t keep going like this, not unless he wants to cut all ties which… he just can’t. He doesn’t want to. 

“Afterparty,” Wes says, hand on his arm, and Dillon gets to his feet and follows him out. 

The ride over is loud, loud enough that he’s pretty sure most people don’t notice how quiet he is. Wes does, Dillon sees, but he doesn’t say anything. He probably doesn’t care. 

He follows the flow of people into the party, fetches up against Anton almost by accident. He’s operating in alcohol and autopilot and it’s easier this way to smile. 

“How are things?” he asks in an undertone and Anton grins at him, pinks a little bit. He knows what Dillon’s actually asking, is pleased about it. Dillon wonders idly who else they’d all told, if anyone. If their parents know. If Arkadi knows, if Porter’s brothers know. If Dillon’s the only one. He’s almost pleased by the thought. 

“They’re in town,” Anton says and Dillon nods because of course they are. “Bored as fuck so they’re staying at the hotel.” 

Dillon laughs at that like Anton expects him to and ducks away, heads deeper into the party. It’s not running away, he tells himself, it’s a tactical retreat. He grabs a beer and drains it, grabs another and sips it as he goes. 

There are people that want to talk to him so he talks to them. It’s easy, a little bit of a flirt and a stupid joke and a couple soundbite-worthy sentences before he’s making his excuses and moving on. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for until he turns and finds he’s a foot away from Wes. He’s talking to some people in suits and ugly ties that look like executives of some kind but they welcome Dillon into the group easily enough. 

Wes lets him lean in a little too close but his mouth is tight and it’s obvious he wants Dillon to stop. Dillon can’t make himself though. 

The group disperses. Dillon follows Wes, doesn’t really know why except everything’s feeling increasingly unreal and he just wants to be anchored. 

They end up in a group that contains Anton. Anton, who looks at the way Dillon’s gravitating into Wes’s space and frowns a little bit. It reminds Dillon in a distant way of the tour with Wes and Hugo, the way Hugo had frowned at Wes’s hands on him. 

Wes’s hands aren’t on him now. He’s glaring actually, and Dillon smiles to himself because he’s fucked up _again_. 

Half of the group has sloughed off to talk about something else and Dillon’s talking to a woman whose name he really wishes he could remember. He gestures out for emphasis, once, and feels his hand connect to something cold and sloshing and suddenly there’s beer all over his sleeve. 

He spins and Wes is holding his spilled cup of beer, staring down at the dark stain on the leg of his pants. 

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ , Dillon,” he snaps. 

Dillon blinks, steps back in an instinctive flinch. Wes rounds on him, holding the half-empty cup out and away from him where it’s dripping beer everywhere. He shakes his other hand to get the beer off and then his head is snapping up to stare at Dillon and Dillon freezes at the cold disdain in that gaze. 

“Listen, you’re a good fuck,” Wes says, so careful and articulated, and it’s so loud and Anton’s right there and Dillon’s frozen. He can’t move. He can’t breathe. “But I don’t have time to fucking _coddle_ you right now, Dillon.” 

He wants to say something. He really does. He wants to make it into a joke, he wants to stop it from echoing so loudly in his ringing ears. He wants to turn to Anton and beg him not to have heard that, to at least pretend he doesn’t know now. There are people everywhere. 

Wes snorts and turns away. 

“Who fucking needs groupies,” he throws back over his shoulder. At Anton. Dillon flinches. “You should give him a try, he’d let you.” 

He laughs as he walks away. It’s the same laugh as always, the edge of uncaring cruelty. 

Quiet falls again. There are people around carefully not looking at him. They know now. Everyone knows. _Anton_ knows. Dillon can’t breathe through the humiliation, can feel heat rising in his cheeks, the sickness in his chest. 

“Dillon,” Anton says after a moment, quietly. Dillon still can’t look at him. 

“I have to go,” he says, too late. His voice comes out false. Too bright, too shrill. He tries to drag a smile to his face but it won’t come, he can feel his lower lip wobbling like a fucking child. The shame flares brighter. 

Anton knows. 

He manages to unstick his feet from the floor, to turn and walk for the back rooms. People move out of his way without looking at him, like he’s invisible. He’s glad of that. He can’t stand the idea of anyone seeing him right now. 

“Dillon!” Anton’s calling and Dillon speeds up, hits the door to the back room and blows right through. He’s not quite running but he’s getting there, turning down a hall he doesn’t recognize. It’s dark, he’s probably not supposed to be back here, he can’t care at all. 

Anton’s footsteps speed up behind him and then there’s a hot hand on his shoulder and he’s being turned. He goes. He just wants this over with. 

Anton’s watching him with eyes that glitter in the dim lighting. His mouth is a thin line. Dillon wonders dully why he’s angry. There’s no reason for it, he hadn’t given anything away to Wes about Anton and Porter and Hugo. He doesn’t know that there’s any reason for Anton to be angry at him. 

“That’s my name,” he says after a moment, not even trying to smile this time. 

He wants to go home. 

“Dillon,” Anton repeats. “Wes, was he-,” 

He cuts himself off. Stares at Dillon for a long moment. The anger is fading a little bit. Dillon doesn’t want to meet his eyes. He forces himself to do it anyway; he’s going to cling to any scrap of Anton’s good opinion he can keep, whatever Wes hasn’t destroyed in four simple sentences. 

“Are you okay?” Anton asks at last. Dillon blinks at him slowly. 

“He was right,” he says instead of answering; he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to be anything like _okay_ ever again. “You know.” 

Anton steps forward and his face is twisting with anger again, Dillon flinches away and looks at the floor. 

“Has he been saying this shit about you since…” he trails off. His eyes are searching Dillon’s face when Dillon chances a glance up. 

“We toured together,” Dillon fills in and shrugs. “It’s not like… it’s not like he’s wrong.” 

Anton hauls in a breath. 

“He is,” he says, slowly, firmly. Like he’s preaching gospel or something, something irrefutable, something other than trying to defend Dillon from the fact of how pathetic he is. In a distant way, somewhere outside the storm of self-loathing and panic and misery that’s all he can comprehend right now, he’s grateful. Anton’s always been kind. 

“He just told the truth,” Dillon argues because he can’t help himself, can’t let Anton deny the truth. Anton makes a noise, angry and loud, and Dillon cute himself off. 

“Dillon. Fuck,” Anton hisses. “You deserve better than this!” 

Dillon's heart cracks heavily.

“Anton,” he says, voice cracking. It's not that he thinks Anton's wrong, exactly. It's just that it doesn't _matter_ whether or not he deserves better than what Wes has been doing for him. He wishes again he could back away or maybe take off running. Anton's too close to him. He just wants him to _stop_.

“Please,” Anton continues and it borders on anger again except for the thin thread of desperation. “Talk to me, okay?” 

“I'm fine,” he whispers. The words are meaningless.

For a moment Anton’s staring at him and his eyes are alien, hard and hot and angry and Dillon’s flinching away from them before he can stop himself. Trying to turn his face away because he still, still feels these things and he hates himself for it.

Anton’s hand catches his jaw, slips around to cup his cheek and turn him back. He goes because he’s absolutely helpless to resist. Anton stares at him again for a moment and the hardness is gone. There’s a soft haze there instead and Dillon tries to read it in bewilderment but it makes no sense and then Anton’s leaning forward.

Anton’s mouth is soft when it presses against Dillon’s.

His lips are chapped and his breath tastes like sweet wine and Dillon still doesn’t understand for a dizzying moment, he’s kissing back dumbly because how could he not. It feels so good, it feels right and warm and his hand is in Anton’s hair before he knows what he’s doing.

Anton’s hand slides down to cup the back of his neck and he breathes in, convulsive, shuddering in Anton’s grip. It breaks the spell because this is too good, this is everything he’s wanted and there are _reasons_ he can’t have this.

Anton stumbles a little when Dillon pushes him away.

“What the fuck,” Dillon tries to say. It comes out with no volume.

Anton blinks at him for a moment, stunned.

“You can’t,” Dillon continues, gaining volume. “You can’t just, I mean.”

His voice breaks. Anton blinks again and suddenly there’s anger swelling up in Dillon’s chest. Bitter anger, more misery than anything else. He’d wanted this. He’d wanted Anton’s mouth on his, he’d held on to it past the point he’d given up on ever knowing what Porter or Hugo’s kisses felt like. He’d _hoped_.

“What about Porter and Hugo?” he asks and his voice breaks.

Anton frowns, still looks bewildered but now a little bit upset.

“What about them?” he asks. He takes a step towards Dillon. Dillon takes a step back. Anton stops, stares at him with something confused and hurt in his eyes.

Dillon doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand why Anton’s the hurt one. He doesn’t understand why Anton had kissed him, why any of this had happened. Doesn't understand why it _doesn't matter_ that Anton is with Hugo and Porter. He can’t make it connect no matter how he scrambles for an explanation and it hurts, he’s _tired_.

“Dillon,” Anton says finally. “Do you... Not want this?”

He doesn't understand what Anton means.

“I don't understand,” he says at last, quiet because it's all he can manage. He's exhausted, so deeply tired. Wrung out by the past few months.

He rallies with a deep breath.

“You're with Porter and Hugo,” he says. He can't meet Anton's eyes. Anton's kiss is lingering on his mouth, phantom and awful. It's effort not to lift his hand to his lips just to touch.

The silence carries for long moments and finally Dillon drags his eyes up, finds Anton examining him with something like realization. Dillon blinks at it. He doesn't understand and he can't summon any outrage anymore.

Anton reaches out and catches Dillon by the wrist. Pulls him in a little bit. Dillon goes.

“Come on,” Anton murmurs. “You need to lie down.”

He keeps moving, tugging Dillon towards the door. Dillon follows for a moment and then balks. Anton looks back at him. His expression is soft and Dillon can't look at it for more than a moment before his eyes drop back to his feet.

“Trust me?” Anton asks. Dillon hauls in a breath.

“Okay,” he says at last and lets Anton lead him on.

* * *

Anton leads him back to the parking lots by the back way, bypassing everyone who could see them. Dillon appreciates it. He's not sure what he looks like but it can't be good. People had heard Wes. Understood what he’d meant, seen Dillon running and put it together.

There's a flicker of the humiliation in his chest; people will know. 

He can't care right now. He's so tired.

They fetch up at a car Dillon doesn't recognize and he blinks when Anton unlocks it and gestures him to the passenger side door.

“You drove?” he asks. His voice cracks the silence they've been walking in and Anton smiles.

“I _can_ drive,” he says and steps away when Dillon climbs in. “I'm gonna make a call for a moment, alright?”

“Whatever,” Dillon says and closes the door.

Anton walks around to lean against the hood. He pulls out his phone. Dillon can see a sliver of his profile, the way his mouth pulls into a smile so sweet it hurts Dillon's teeth when the person on the other end picks up.

He cracks open the door a little, enough that Anton's voice carries to him.

“-were right, Hugo, I know. Don't rub it in, fuck you.” He sighs and Dillon closes his eyes, leans his temple against the cold plastic of the seat.

“We'll just have to talk to him. Fuck you, Porter, you should have seen him. Whatever,” Anton grumbles and then laughs a little, breathless. “Love you too, both of you.”

Dillon shuts the door. A minute later Anton's sliding into the driver's seat, closing his door and turning to look at him. Dillon doesn't look back, keeps his eyes out the window and eventually Anton turns back, turns the key in the ignition and starts driving.

The streetlights are something to look at and Dillon follows them with his eyes absently. The radio’s off and he wishes it weren’t just so there’d be something to fill the silence. He feels heavy, like if Anton lets him be still long enough he’ll fall asleep wherever he is. He wants to go home, probably even the cold emptiness of how alone he is in all that space would be better than this. 

He wants Anton to kiss him again. He wants Anton to ignore the right thing and kiss him and he hates himself, he _hates_ himself for it. 

He doesn’t realize they’re not going to his hotel until they’re pulling into the parking lot of one he doesn’t recognize. He’d been dozing, carried off by the parabola loops of the streetlights and telephone wires, working his way back through his memories and blocking them off one by one. 

He’s pretty good at repression. He’s been honing the skill for months. 

“Where-?” he manages when he notices where they are, but Anton’s already out of the car and opening his door. 

“You said you trusted me,” he reminds Dillon and Dillon rolls his eyes but he follows. 

It’s an expensive hotel, which doesn’t surprise Dillon at all. The doorman doesn’t look at them, too busy with his magazine at this time of night, and they get to the elevators without a word. Anton keys a number in that Dillon doesn’t pay attention to, just leans against the wall and knuckles at an eye absently. 

Anton reaches out and puts a hand on his arm and Dillon lets it stay there. 

When the doors ding and slide open Anton steps out, gets a grip on Dillon’s wrist and leads him on down the hall. Dillon lets him do that too. It feels kind of good, like he’s being taken care of. It’s a sweet little fantasy and for a few steps he indulges in it - Anton’s taking care of him, is going to get him to bed and he can sleep this whole day away and wake up to a world that isn’t quite so bleak - before he shakes it away. 

Anton stops at a door the same as every other door in the hallway, slides in his keycard without letting go of Dillon’s wrist and then nudges him inside when the door opens. Dillon goes; he’s not paying attention and so he gets all the way into the room before he notices Porter and Hugo are there. He freezes, like a deer in headlights, locked-up and panicking. 

Anton closes the door behind him. 

They’re on the bed, Hugo against the headboard with his PSP in hand and Porter sprawled over his lap, holding his phone. They’re both staring at him and for a moment Dillon can’t breathe, not with so many eyes on him. It’s only Anton’s grip on his wrist that keeps him from bolting. That, and the grinding exhaustion. 

“You’re here,” Porter says and scrambles up, topples off the bed and scrambling upright. Hugo follows a little more sedately, moves over to sit on the edge of the bed. They’re still watching Dillon. 

“What is this?” he asks slowly. 

Anton steps away, over to Porter and Hugo. They move to welcome him in with an instinctiveness that’s beautiful to see. Dillon doesn’t even hurt seeing it. He’s too tired, too wrung out. He just watches and wonders if they’ll let him sit down soon. 

Anton turns to him and he tries to pull himself a little bit more upright. The way Anton’s watching him, mouth working for a moment like he’s lining up his words on his tongue. Like he’s thinking over something important, something he wants to be sure about saying. 

As patiently as he can Dillon waits. 

“We wanted to ask you something,” Hugo puts in and Anton nods, looking a little relieved. 

Dillon squints at them for a moment. 

“Alright,” he says warily. His voice is a wreck, he sounds like he’s been smoking all day. For a moment he he’s trying to swallow, trying to relieve the parching in his throat. He misses Anton readying himself, only tunes back in when Anton’s fidgeting stills into a firm stance. 

“We want you,” Anton says simply. 

Dillon blinks at him dumbly for a long moment and then he understands in a starburst of pain that’s more like a supernova. 

Wes had been almost right, when he’d told Anton Dillon would let him have anything he wanted. Maybe, a day ago, he would have. Maybe before Wes had said what he’d said, if Anton or Porter or Hugo had made the first move. He would have chalked it up to taking what he could get and being thankful they trusted him enough to let him be involved at all. But that was before. 

Now, he doesn’t want anything. 

He’s a little bit sick thinking they’d ask him for this, after everything. 

He’s expecting Anton to be the one to keep talking and so when Porter moves first Dillon flinches. He can’t make himself move but he wants to, thinks maybe he _should_. Should take off running so he doesn’t have to talk about it, about any of this. He thinks maybe they know. Know he’s still in love with them, has always been, hasn’t been able to control himself and move on. 

“Dillon,” Porter says softly, he’s smiling a little nervously. He’s stepping towards him across the space between Dillon and all of them but he stops when Dillon flinches back. 

“I know,” he begins and then hauls in a breath that hurts. “I know I’m… I.” 

He sees their faces tighten a little bit and that’s the last straw. He’s tired. He’s tired and he feels dirty and unwanted and he just… he just wants to go home. 

“I know I’m easy but I just want to go home,” he mumbles. “I don’t… I don’t want to do this. Can I leave?” 

“Holy shit,” Hugo says. 

And then he’s all the way back across the room, he looks kind of like he jumped there, it’d almost be funny if Dillon were capable of finding anything funny right now. He’s braced against the wall, hands behind him a little bit, he looks _scared_. Dillon doesn’t understand. 

Porter takes a step back. Another one. Keeps backing away until his knees hit the bed and he’s sitting with a suddenness that looks unplanned. He looks scared too, and a little sick. Pale with shock like he’d just been suckerpunched. 

Anton steps forward this time. It’s careful. He doesn’t go much farther than Porter had, reaches out a little with one hand. 

“It isn’t like that,” he says. “We don’t want that, Jesus _fuck_ Dillon.” 

It’s loud. Firm. His gospel-preaching voice. Dillon stares at it and then at his hand and tries to understand. Tries to make sense of it all. 

There’s relief, so much relief. It’s like cool water in him, soothing and good. Relief that they aren’t asking for that from him. Relief mixed with confusion though because if they don’t want him to fuck him, if that’s not it, then he doesn’t know what he’s doing here. 

He opens his mouth and realizes he has nothing to say. Closes it again. 

“We…” Anton says and his face folds in a little bit with pain. Dillon doesn’t understand it, why he looks so hurt. “Is it so hard to believe we want _you?_ ” 

“...Me,” Dillon says slowly. 

“We want, fuck,” Anton says and then trails off. 

“We want to date you,” Porter says from the bed. His voice is a thread of sound and when his head comes up his eyes are wet. For a moment Dillon’s so absorbed in his worry about Porter, about having _made Porter cry_ that he doesn’t even process what Porter’s said. 

“He’s right,” Hugo puts in. Accented voice, he’s watching Dillon with something like self-loathing that Dillon wants to wipe away but doesn’t _understand_. 

“You want to date me,” he mumbles. It comes out with no volume but they all nod anyway. It’s so quiet in the room even his voice echoes in the silence. Their breathing is the loudest thing and he draws himself in, tries to pull himself together. It feels like his thoughts are coming to him through honey, slow and scrambled. “But you’re… you’re with each other.” 

“Yeah,” Hugo says and for a moment his tart sass is returning, he’s almost like himself before his gaze drops again. “Those aren’t exclusive, Dillon.” 

“You want to date me,” he repeats and his voice is gaining volume. He still doesn’t understand but it feels like something in him has, some dam about to break, some brilliant sun rising in his chest with a brightness that’s overwhelming. “You want to _date_ me.” 

“All of us,” Anton tells him softly and takes another little step forward, so close if Dillon reached out their fingertips would probably brush. 

“I,” Dillon begins and the dam in his chest breaks entirely. It’s a rush of feeling that he thinks is maybe mostly happiness, maybe a little bit of grief, maybe a little bit of anger, confused, he doesn’t know what he’s _supposed_ to be feeling. “Fuck, me?” 

“If you want us,” Anton replies and he’s taking a final step forward, Dillon’s reaching out and taking his hand and it’s nothing like he’d imagined at all. 

Anton pulls him in and he goes easily. 

Anton smells like aftershave and beer and a trace of cigarette smoke and then Hugo and Porter are crowding in too and Dillon can’t breathe with their proximity. He closes his eyes, throws his arms around Anton’s waist and buries his nose on his shoulder and breathes. A moment later there’s a hesitant hand on his arm and he looks up and Hugo’s looking at him anxiously. 

“Is that a yes?” he asks, soft and nervous and Dillon reaches out, reels him in too. He can barely believe his own daring but it feels right and Hugo goes, gets a hand up and tangles his fingers in Dillon’s hair and wraps his free arm around Dillon and Anton both. 

“Yes,” Dillon breathes out, “Fuck, yes, it’s a yes, yes.” 

Porter laughs and then he’s there too, pressed against Dillon’s side until he opens his arm and Porter’s slipping in too. It’s warm, and he can smell them all, and the party and Wes and the last few months feel a million miles away and so unimportant. 

Anton makes a sad noise when Dillon pulls back a little but then Dillon presses forward again, nudges their noses together a little and then their mouths are connecting. 

This kiss is different than their first. Is syrup-slow and warm and good and Anton’s hands find his back. He’s surrounded by them, by these people he loves. Porter’s pressing in too, annoyed needy noises and Dillon turns a little, lets Porter guide their mouths together too. It’s different and so much the same and Dillon loses himself for a long moment in it until Anton’s huffing an amused laugh against his cheek and he breaks the kiss to breathe. 

“My turn,” Hugo says, soft with laughter, and the broad hand in Dillon’s hair is turning his face up to be kissed. It’s just like Anton and Porter, different and the same, and Dillon realizes dizzily he’s going to get to memorize all those things. All the places they overlapped and all the places that were open and waiting for Dillon to slot into place. 

He opens his mouth and what he means to say is _I love you_ but what comes out is, “I’m so fucking tired.” 

Probably a good thing, he thinks in the beat of silence. Something that should be saved for a less charged moment. They have time, he realizes with wonder. He can tell them later. 

They’re suddenly a flurry of motion around him, Porter and Anton are bickering good naturedly and Hugo’s leading him to the bed - there’s only one, he realizes with a flush of happiness - and he’s being sat down on the edge of it. It’s a little overwhelming. Something he’s going to have to get used to, happily. 

“Do you want to sleep with us yet, or,” Anton asks and then hesitates, something sorrowful crossing his face. 

Dillon thinks they have a lot to talk about, probably. Things to say that won’t be pleasant but are necessary. Things he’s going to have to work to process. He’s going to have to find the way he’s going to fit into their relationship. He’s got questions, and he’s sure they do too, but in the meanwhile there’s this and he remembers forever ago he’d wondered what it’d be like to wake up to these people. 

“Yeah,” he says and smiles when Porter immediately tackles him back onto the mattress. “Yes, please,” he says, muffled in Porter’s stomach.


End file.
